


Where We Got Left to Run

by villainne



Series: We Must Be Killers [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Clint & Natasha are bros, Clint Barton: Total Fucking Mess, Gen, one hundred percent headcanon, rated F for Feelings, road trip of sadness, un beta'd SORRY
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-28
Updated: 2014-10-25
Packaged: 2018-02-10 20:21:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2038815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/villainne/pseuds/villainne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Mostly what he remembers is the color blue, flooding his vision, tinting his awareness, tasting it in the back of his throat.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is about Clint, after the events of _The Avengers_ \--as you might guess, this story is mostly about the immediate aftermath of trauma and loss. Consider this a trigger warning for PTSD, alcohol abuse, and panic attacks, at least. I am trying to treat this with as much respect and empathy as I am capable of (and the things I am warning for are not explicitly identified as such by the characters), but please, don't hesitate to comment if you have criticisms or concerns. Thanks.

Clint is essentially sleepwalking after the battle. No one will let him actually shoot Loki in the face, and it’s all very anticlimactic and unsatisfying. He stays close to Natasha, holds himself still to keep himself from doing violence. When Nat proposes they do happy hour at Stark’s, he can’t find the wherewithal to object, but he feels disturbingly apathetic about the idea. Clint Barton, uninterested in alcohol? He’s not so far gone he can’t recognize a red flag when it’s waving in his face.

This is largely the reason he follows everyone back to Stark Tower, to Tony’s bedroom to steal clothes, to the entire floor of guest rooms. Natasha follows him into the one farthest from the common area. It’s also farthest from an exit, he supposes. He’s not really sure what the escape routes are for the sixty-somethingth floor. He tries to worry about that.

Clint is vaguely aware of Natasha talking to him, the shower running. Some time passes while he’s not closing his eyes. She reappears, in an outfit that reminds him of the fake modeling she’d done for her Stark Industries cover. Loose, comfortable silk edged with lace. It’s the kind of thing she doesn’t like to admit she loves. She drags him to a standing position, shoves him to the bathroom. By the time she crosses her arms he’s focused enough to reassure her, and actually undress.

He stands still, head bowed, under the shower spray. He can’t hear anything beyond the water. The hot water eases the ache in his shoulders, his back. Washes the blood and dirt away.

The adrenaline dissipating in his blood leaves him numb, twitchy, exhausted. He doesn’t actually know what day it is—he doesn’t actually know how long he’d been under Loki’s influence. The panic is there, waiting for him at the edge of his awareness, but he doesn’t have the brainpower right now to appreciate it. He knows the things that are going to hit him in the chest, sooner or later: Coulson; the helicarrier; not knowing what else. He can sort of remember some of it—he remembers feeling safe under Loki’s authority, he remembers, vaguely, the infinite blue expanse of the tesseract. Mostly what he remembers is the color blue, flooding his vision, tinting his awareness, tasting it in the back of his throat.

Clint starts to shake. He turns around slowly, turns off the water, steps out of the tub. There’s a set of pajamas folded on the toilet seat, so he puts them on. He exits the bathroom without looking at Natasha and collapses onto the bed. He stares at the ceiling, trying to empty his mind again, trying to achieve unconsciousness through sheer force of will.

He feels the bed dip as Natasha crawls in on the other side. They’ve shared so many beds, so many adrenaline-drunk nights and bruised and aching morning-afters, that it hadn’t occurred to him she might not join him, but her movements are careful, tentative like a green agent approaching a mark. When she’s stretched out next to him, she touches his shoulder, gently, and he rolls over to cling to her waist and breathe against her neck. Natasha smells like unfamiliar shampoo, cloyingly sweet and floral instead of the minty herbal brand she prefers. But she’s warm, and she curls her fingers in his hair, strokes his back slowly, and eventually Clint falls asleep, and doesn’t even dream.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _From here, with the city in silhouette, they can’t even see the wreckage._

Clint feels Natasha get up, and he sort of half-heartedly tries to grab her, keep her there, warm and soft and safe, but his limbs are heavy and really he’s no match for her on a good day.

He starts to drift back to sleep, but jerks awake a few moments later, is sitting up and reaching for his quiver with his left arm out before he realizes that he’s a) in a bed, unarmed; b) reacting to a false sensation of falling that was caused by falling asleep; c) actually safe. For a certain definition of “safe.” He can hear movement all over the floor—voices and a coffee grinder coming from the kitchen, water running in an adjacent room. Something about it reminds him of traveling with the circus, when he was little. A bunch of strangers doing normal domestic shit in weird circumstances, in temporary homes. Suburban life on TV always seems totally foreign to him, but the rituals are the same everywhere.

Clint rolls onto his back, notes his assorted aches. It’s worst in his shoulders—it’d hurt like fuck to draw an arrow today, and for many, many reasons he prays he won’t have to. Groaning, Clint throws back the sheets and puts his feet on the floor. He sits on the edge of the bed for a minute, pressing his thumb into his right shoulder where it’s sore and cramped. It’s still the same day, he reminds himself. This morning he woke up on the helicarrier, Coulson already dead but midtown Manhattan intact. It was _today_ that a ragtag bunch of superheroes, and one dumbass recovering-brainwashed archer, fought an actual _battle_ , against actual _aliens_ , in front of thousands of actual civilians.

Hill must be pissed.

Clint manfully does not whimper as he finally stands and shuffles towards the door. As he approaches the kitchen, he can see Natasha checking out the Cap (typical) as he’s inventorying the fridge. “Anyone else want eggs?” Rogers says, and Clint suddenly doesn’t know when he ate last.

“Oh man yes, please, like half a dozen for me.”

Natasha speaks up to offer some logistics (typical), drawing Clint’s attention to the coffeepot gurgling happily behind her, and he almost cries with relief. Rogers is laughing at something. “It’s like feeding an army, with you lot,” he says, which Clint thinks is kind of offensive since Rogers is probably going to eat twice as much as any of them, if Clint understands the science of futuristic genetically modified super soldiers from the past. Which he obviously doesn’t.

“Hey,” he says anyway. “You’re the one with the technologically advanced metabolism, bro.” Rogers just grins at him, shrugs.

Natasha disappears into the elevator, and Clint moves over to the counter to stare at the coffeemaker and will it to brew faster.

“How’re you doing?” Banner asks him. He says it almost like it’s a joke, but the kind of joke that’s funny because it’s so depressing. Clint looks him up and down, evaluates him. This is a world-class physicist who did an experiment on himself that went horribly wrong, and now he shape shifts into an uncontrollable monster when he gets mad. Clint decides he doesn’t really care about Banner’s jokes.

“I’m fine,” he says shortly, and starts opening cupboards to look for mugs. He can see Banner’s mouth twist, like a sad smirk. Clint continues to ignore him.

Rogers is puttering around finding pans and stuff, looking very domestic. Clint is a little skeptical about his easygoing, high-functioning stoic soldier act, but in the short term it’s as good a strategy as any for making it through the day. 

“You drink coffee, Rogers?” He asks.

“Depends. Does it taste like the rusty metal can it was brewed in?”

Clint surveys the coffeemaker, which takes up half the counter and probably cost as much as his car. “Doubt it.”

“Then it’s not really coffee, but I’ll take a cup.”

Clint nods, satisfied. Stark has got to be the only superhero in history with expensive tastes—well. Batman, probably. Clint brings Rogers a cup of coffee, and Rogers thanks him politely. So high-functioning, it’s suspicious.

Banner takes his own coffee to the kitchen table, where he has to move a bunch of plastic shopping bags out of the way before he can sit down. Whatever’s in them doesn’t inspire more than a raised eyebrow from Banner. 

When the elevator dings, Clint grabs another mug to meet Natasha with, and is surprised to see Stark in the elevator with her. She’s smirking at him, which suggests he’s not behaving too badly, so that’s good. Clint is tired and doesn’t want to break up any fights tonight.

“So the lord of the castle is dining with us commoners?” He asks Stark. He only has a split second to wonder if needling him about it is counterproductive.

“Mm, yes, accurate metaphor, Barton, but since I don’t deign to cook for myself I thought I’d take advantage of you all.” Stark has a decanter of whiskey in his hand, and he goes straight for the coffee. “Irish for your coffee, anyone?” He offers, after preparing his own—more Irish than coffee, as far as Clint could see. “No? Rogers?” Singling out Rogers is interesting, Clint thinks. What is the deal with those two. Stark tops off his own mug before putting down the decanter. “Everyone slept well, I trust?”

Banner is the first to respond, in that dry tone that seems to imply he knows more than he’s letting on. “Did you?” is all he says, but Stark gets defensive.

“I may not be a superhuman, or Mr. Hyde,” he retorts, “but I don’t actually require afternoon naps.”

Banner makes a face that clearly says, “you’re not hiding your deep-seated trauma from anyone” and which Clint hopes to never have directed at himself, as he picks up his coffee.

Thor appears, obnoxiously shirtless, breaking the tension with his weird, vaguely Shakespearean cadence. “Salutations, comrades. I was drawn by the smell of coffee. Might I—?”

Steve visibly tries to process this as Natasha pours coffee for Thor. “They have coffee on Asgard?” he asks.

“I am familiar with the drink from my time in New Mexico, with the Lady Jane Foster and Erik Selvig.”

Clint feels his mouth twitch, but he doesn’t say anything. He’d heard the rumors straight from the locals about the guy who vandalized the diner.

Natasha silently moves over to the windows to drink her coffee. Clint watches her, and he knows she probably just wants a minute to herself, to not deal with Tony or listen to an alien explain the twentieth century to a time-capsule of a super soldier, but he feels suddenly adrift without her. Cut loose, abandoned in the field without backup, even if the field in this case is just the largest kitchen he’s ever been in, with a disturbingly fit grandfather-type frying eggs next to him. 

Clint tops off his coffee with Stark’s whiskey and follows Natasha, standing close enough to her that their shoulders touch when he breathes. “Hey,” he says, apologetically.

“Hi,” she says, but it means, “you’re okay.”

Stark and Rogers are bickering again, behind them, Thor rumbling to Banner. Plates clatter, the toaster pops a few times, as they watch the sun set. From here, with the city in silhouette, they can’t even see the wreckage.

“Hey Spy Kids,” Stark calls. “Come get breakfast before the superheroes eat it all.”

Clint tears his gaze from the skyline and goes to serve himself as much food as he can fit on a plate. It looks like Rogers scrambled three dozen eggs, and they’ve toasted the whole loaf of bread, and Clint doesn’t doubt they’ll eat all of it. They barely speak as everyone eats.

Eventually Stark stands, breaks the silence with the arrogance of a ringmaster. “All right gang,” he says. “I took the liberty of getting you all some clothes of your own while you were napping. Really, there are just way too many pecs in here, you two should be ashamed of yourselves.” He frowns insincerely at Rogers and Thor before going to retrieve the pile of shopping bags from the corner.

When Stark hands one to Clint, he looks inside warily to discover inoffensive denim and cotton. He looks up and smirks when Natasha says, full-on Black Widow, “I want you to understand that my compliance with this in no way indicates approval of your behavior.”

Banner—laughs? Bold. Stark is dismissive, then addresses the room, “See you all upstairs for the party in a few?”

Rogers frowns. “Stark, it’s not exactly a party—“

“Look, kid, I know you’re literally too wholesome to get drunk, but the rest of us need something to take the edge off after committing alien genocide and, you know, traveling to a different galaxy while carrying a nuke.” Stark’s voice is hard, acidic, and Clint can feel the violent tension the man is holding under his swagger and sarcasm.

“All right, shots it is!” He interrupts with false enthusiasm. “Stark’s not allowed to DJ—“ then Clint realizes who he’s talking to, and tries not to sigh. “Right, tunes are on me. Suit up, boys.” With that, he turns and heads for the bedroom to get dressed, trying to put a bounce in his step, trying to remember what dancing feels like.

Natasha comes in behind him as he’s taking out his new clothes, and he hears her sigh. She goes into the bathroom without saying anything. Clint dresses efficiently, grateful for the comfortable civvies. The leather chafes. A uniform chafes.

Clint leans against the closed door and flips the zipper pull on his hoodie up and down as he waits for Natasha. Does she have mascara stashed on her person, he wonders. Sometimes after a bad mission, she dresses to the nines—she says it’s a disguise, that it makes her feel more human. Sometimes, after a bad mission, they get drunk on moonshine in their underwear in hotel rooms.

When Natasha appears, Clint has to laugh. Her face is bare, her hair kinda frizzy, and her arms and legs bruised and scratched all to hell, but he bets her outfit would fit right in at any party Stark’s ever been to. The leather dress clings to her ass like another skin, and the pattern is like a cartoon of her already unrealistic curves. Also, there are high heels.

She looks like she’s going to murder him.

“I’m sorry—” he gasps, totally not sorry. “You look hot, obviously, I just—Stark really does have iron balls to put you in that getup.”

She rolls her eyes, but also she smiles ever so slightly. “Or something,” she says. “Maybe someday I’ll be able to wear it somewhere worthwhile.”

“Hey now,” Clint feigns offense. “Don’t shit on happy hour.” It had been her damn idea, hadn’t it?

Natasha smiles, indulgent but honest. “You’re right,” she says, like she’s actually apologizing. “Let’s go get happy.” She holds her arm out, bent at the elbow like a gentleman, so Clint links his own arm with it and strides toward the exit.

Rogers is loitering in the kitchen, looking uncomfortable and dressed like a grandpa. Clint wonders if Stark found him period-accurate clothing, somehow. Rogers makes the face that Clint often sees on unsuspecting guards before Natasha incapacitates them, then collects himself poorly. “Ah, Agent Romanov, you look—lovely. Agent Barton.”

Clint sees Natasha give her most fatal smile before she says, “Oh Steve, please, call me Natasha.” He’d feel sorry for the poor guy if it weren’t so funny.

“C’mon buddy,” he says, when he can talk without laughing out loud. “Let’s go see if we can’t outsmart those scientists who made you sober.” And he tugs gently on Natasha’s arm.

Rogers follows them into the elevator, saying, “Actually, I don’t think—“ but Natasha interrupts him before he can explain again about the super soldier thing.

“Don’t worry, Steve,” she says. “I’m sure Stark’s liquor is plenty worth drinking even if it won’t make you forget.”

It’s the kind of gallows humor you get used to quick, around SHIELD, around Natasha. Rogers is new, though, and he avoids their eyes, gets quiet. “Yeah,” he says. “I’m sure you’re right.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am having to break chapters where I wasn't planning to because this shit just _keeps getting longer_ , so here! Another chapter! All misery, all the time!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Tonight Natasha is going to slam her glass down on the bar and suck the life out of that lime, and then they’re going to do it again until Clint stops thinking about things._

Clint can see Natasha start to feel guilty, but they’re saved by fucking AC/DC, as the doors open on Stark’s predictable party playlist. “Hey, the stragglers are here!” He yells. Totally already drunk. “At last, the party can begin.” Then he wolf-whistles, like a man who truly does not value his own life. “Agent Romanov, you are a vision. I do have excellent taste, don’t I.”

“Yes, Lady Romanov, you look lovely,” Thor chimes in, and Clint rolls his eyes. Natasha’s effect on men: transcending the centuries and the universe.

“Settle down, boys,” Natasha says. “Stark, why don’t you make yourself useful and pour me something strong. And something fancy for Steve, since he’ll actually be able to remember this in the morning.”

“Ugh,” scoffs Stark, surveying his collection of bottles. “How could they do this to you, knowing you’d never be able to get drunk again. Horrible, what people will do to each other in the name of science. So, you a whiskey man? What did they drink in your day, grog?”

What is grog, Clint wonders. Is that even an old thing? Rogers doesn’t rise to the bait for once, just asks for whiskey. 

Clint is very aware that Natasha declined to order for _him_ , so he joins Stark behind the bar and finds himself a bottle of tequila that looks expensive, and various accessories. Secretly Clint doesn’t like the taste of tequila much, but he loves the ritual. Messy and sticky and filled with innuendo, it’s stupid and immature and after a mission that’s comforting. Clint doesn’t really have a frame of reference for the day he’s had, so for now he’s sticking with the tried-and-shitty coping mechanisms of “getting drunk” and “not thinking about it.” That’s why happy hour was invented, after all. It stands to reason that he should be able to get through the night just by drinking a little extra and encouraging some bad decisions. He smirks at Stark as he licks salt off his own hand, and Stark makes a face like he’s just figured out science.

"Steve! STEVE! Oh my god--literally, Thor, this affects you too. This is important 21st century cultural education--do you know what a body shot is?” They have some colleagues as hot as Natasha, for once, to distract Stark’s apparently involuntary sexual harassment instincts. Natasha herself is slowly distancing herself from the bar, reacting to the words “body shot” like a cat to water.

Rogers consents to the experiment much more readily than Clint would have guessed—he’s wearing this strange little half-smile that actually kind of makes Clint nervous, though. It’s the face of a man who knows something is going to go horribly wrong and is just going to sit back and watch. 

“Okay, buddy, take your top off and lie down on the bar,” Stark says, gesturing. Rogers just raises an eyebrow at him—it actually looks a lot like the face Natasha usually makes at Stark. Stark sighs, and crosses his arms, considering Rogers’s body with the kind of deliberation he directs at blueprints and large pieces of machinery. “Unbutton your shirt and pull it down over one shoulder?” He tries.

Rogers shrugs at this, and complies, stretching out his undershirt as he hooks it over his vast shoulder. His traps are so huge they sort of get in the way of what, on a normal person, would be the dip of the collarbone. Stark directs Rogers into a weird shrug to make a hollow as deep as possible, and then spills tequila all over him. Stark cracks up immediately, and doesn’t bother to try again—experiment failed, fucking with Rogers accomplished. Thor is frowning.

“What circumstances would compel a man to consume liquor in such an inefficient manner?” He says. Clint maybe giggles, but in his defense he got several shots in very quickly.

“Oh, none, really,” Stark explains airily. “But it’s a very effective method of getting drunk girls to take their tops off.” 

Rogers rolls his eyes and starts buttoning his shirt. “I wouldn’t have thought a man with your reputation would need to resort to tricks, Tony,” he says, eyes wide with fake sympathy. Stark makes a shocked and hurt face, and Clint laughs so hard he spills his drink.

Thor just looks bemused, and watches Clint. When Clint has composed himself, Thor places a hand on his arm and nods to a corner, drawing him slightly away from the others. Thor looks very sincere.

“Agent Hawkeye,” he begins, so Clint interrupts him immediately.

“You can really just call me Clint.”

“Clint. I can never fully atone for my brother’s actions, as they were his own, but I hope you will accept my grave apology for what he has done to you. Loki’s methods are dishonorable, and an insult to a warrior such as yourself.”

Clint’s jaw aches from grinding his teeth so hard.

“I hope that I may have the honor of fighting beside you again in the future, and that Loki’s crimes will not prevent our worlds from joining in a friendly alliance.”

Clint forces himself to nod, awkwardly, and Thor looks him in the eyes for an uncomfortable moment before nodding back at him.

“I must ask you something, then,” he says. Clint prays for a change of subject. “After Loki’s forces attacked the SHIELD aircraft, Dr. Banner assumed his other form.”

Clint nods, warily. This much had been filled in for him, but it wasn’t the discussion topic he’d have chosen.

“Lady Romanov was alone with him when he changed, I believe—“ Clint’s head snaps up to meet Thor’s eyes, at this, and Thor takes note of it. Clint has always let too much show on his face. “She outran him for some time,” he says, clearly trying to be reassuring but failing at it. “When he did overtake her, I was able to reach them and draw Banner’s aggression onto myself. With Mjolnir, I am a better match for Dr. Banner in that form. Lady Romanov was not greatly harmed, but I believe she was—distressed, by this encounter.”

Here Thor pauses, and Clint releases his hands from the fists they formed without his knowledge.

“Well, fuckin’ yeah, Thor,” he says. “Have you read the file on the Hulk? That was probably the worst beating Natasha’s faced in years.”

Thor is still frowning. “Her manner suggested—I do not know the Lady Romanov well, of course, but I had not been given to believe that she is a warrior easily frightened by physical harm. I had hoped you might, given your close relationship, you might offer some—comfort, to her.”

Clint struggles to parse this for a minute. “I don’t think Natasha needs a hug,” he says. “If I’ve got this right, it sounds like you swooped in and saved her ass from a tight spot?”

Thor looks very confused at this, so Clint waves his drink dismissively.

“Just, never mind. If you want to make her feel better about the Hulk thing, she might be concerned that you think she owes you anything.”

“Owe me? But we were comrades in arms, I did nothing—“

“Exactly, bro. But trust me when I say it hasn’t always been that simple for her.”

Thor’s frown doesn’t go away, but he nods, and thumps Clint heavily on the arm (Clint stumbles to the right), and goes off to sit by himself on a couch, his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped in front of him. Clint sees Natasha follow him a moment later, escaping what appears to have become an extremely uncomfortable situation with Banner himself.

Clint tries to take pleasure in Natasha’s misfortune (Clint would never say it to her face, but she’s a really great Team Mom, despite _hating_ it) rather than worrying about what she didn’t tell him. If he’d needed to know, she would have told him, and if he’s feeling like most of his recent history will be recorded in need-to-know files that he’ll never have the clearance for, well. That’s not Natasha’s fault.

No one has dealt with the AC/DC situation yet, so Clint decides to focus on that for the moment. Stark appears to have a playlist on some kind of iPad knockoff, so Clint sneaks up behind him and snatches it out of his hands. Stark yelps, which Clint considers a bonus, even as he’s closing out the media player and pulling up YouTube. He considers his options, briefly, then goes straight for Miley Cyrus. It has exactly the desired effect on Stark, and Rogers just looks vaguely relieved. He leans over Clint’s shoulder to look at the screen. “Is that—what is this a video of?” He asks. “Where are the instruments?”

“Oh, this isn’t a real performance,” Clint explains, grinning. “This is a music video—the band pretends to sing, and the music gets edited in later.”

Rogers considers this for a moment, watching the video. “So… It’s sort of like a musical?”

Clint tilts his head. “Yeah, bro. Sure.” Then he cues up some more classics of the genre.

Stark sputters indignantly every time Clint presses play on the next track, but he seems content to just register his disapproval and drink more. Thor comes over and doesn’t actually bow, but like may as well have, as he makes a brief but formal speech thanking Stark for his hospitality and wishing them all a pleasant evening and—if Clint understood that—pleasant victory sex with their fellow warriors. Rogers looks kind of pale, and Banner appears to be stifling a laugh behind him, but Stark is oblivious. Thor leaves, and Natasha joins them, quietly.

Clint puts on an Alanis Morissette song, and peeks at Natasha out of the corner of his eye. She’s watching Banner, who’s watching Rogers debate Stark on the relative artistic merits of AC/DC and Destiny’s Child. Her eyes are sad. Clint goes around the bar and starts slicing limes. “Nat!” He yells, maybe letting himself sound a little drunker than he is. He lets his hand wobble as he pours a shot. “Nat, you have some catching up to do.” She smiles at him as he wets the back of his hand with the lime, salts it, and hands Natasha the lime and the shot. Then he shoves his salted hand in her face and says, “Let’s go, lady. Happy hour.”

She doesn’t bother putting on a show for him when she licks the salt off his skin—she knows she’s never needed to, with him, but they’re not doing that tonight anyway. Tonight she’s just doing tequila shots to humor him, and they’re not going to talk about collateral damage or how their heads are going to feel tomorrow or who they even work for if Coulson is dead or the fact that Coulson is dead or the fact that it’s probably Clint’s fault. Tonight Natasha is going to slam her glass down on the bar and suck the life out of that lime, and then they’re going to do it again until Clint stops thinking about things.

“All right, Romanov! You do that like a pro,” yells Tony. “Okay, do like six more and then we’ll have a real party.”

“I do everything like a pro, Stark,” Natasha tells him, but she pours another. Clint trades her a lime for the bottle, but Nat raises an eyebrow at him before he can take a swig. He grabs three more shot glasses from the bar and fills them all.

“Who’s joining us?” He shouts. “Stark, c’mere, we’re drinking to your hospitality. Banner? Rogers?” Banner shakes his head, and Rogers rolls his eyes but takes one of the shots, holding it out expectantly.

Stark spills some of his as he picks up a glass and swings it around, knocking it against everyone else’s. “To my hospitality!”

Rogers smirks. “To the kindness of Tony’s heart.”

Natasha looks amused, and tips back her shot without saying anything, so the rest of them follow.

Eventually Clint does this enough times that things get sort of nonlinear, and blurry, and at one point a woman with red hair comes in and yells, and is nice to Natasha, and then later someone is trying to make him go somewhere and he doesn’t want to, but then he’s in a bed that smells like Nat, and then he’s asleep.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Somewhere, behind the hangover, is a horrible thing. He doesn’t even know how many horrible things. When he remembers what happened._
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _When he._
> 
>  
> 
> _What happened yesterday._
> 
>  
> 
> _When._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (someday i will fix that awkward hand-wavey line about the cars with the details wtgw dug up for me like the world's greatest detective.)
> 
> also sorry about the misery ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Clint reluctantly regains consciousness to the soothing British vowels of Stark’s ridiculous AI. Before he’s forced himself to open his eyes, Natasha squirms away from him, dislodging his head from the pillow and making the tequila slosh around in his brain. He voices his disapproval with as much dignity as he can muster—it comes out as a groan.

“Up and at ‘em, cowboy,” says Natasha, who Clint used to consider a friend. “SHIELD’s here already.”

Clint does not cry.

He tries to breathe deeply through the nausea and pounding headache as he listens to Natasha moving around the room. He carefully shoves the blankets to the end of the bed with his foot. There are things that he knows that he’s not thinking about. A reason he should stay in bed, beyond the feeling that his head might fall off if he were to stand up. Somewhere, behind the hangover, is a horrible thing. He doesn’t even know how many horrible things. When he remembers what happened.

When he.

What happened yesterday.

When.

Natasha smacks his ass, bringing him back to the specific misery of right now. He makes a sound.

“I’ll put coffee on,” she says, “but if Fury is here I’m not going to stop him coming in after you.”

Clint assumes that she leaves the room, then, but he’s focused on a fold in the clean white sheet a couple inches from his face. In the light, it looks smooth, immaculate. The wrinkles cast shadows.

Fury coming after him. Will Fury come after him? Clint didn’t speak to anyone but Natasha and Rogers on the helicarrier—they hadn’t waited around for a debrief. Clint doesn’t actually know what Fury would do to him. Clint is. From Fury’s perspective, Clint has got to be a liability at this point. Right? SHIELD has rehabilitated mind-controlled agents before, obviously, but. Magic? Is that. What does that. Can you. Be rehabilitated from magic? Will he ever. Will Loki ever. Will it. Ever.

Clint slowly reaches out a hand to smooth out the sheet.

Natasha would, though. She would try to keep Fury from him. If Fury decided he was a liability. She would. Something. Take him to one of her super secret safe houses. She would protect him. She has plans for this. He’s never heard them, but. He knows. She has back ups. Contingencies.

Clint very carefully rolls onto his back. Clint takes deep breaths.

There’s a thing. A magic thing. That Thor is going to use to take Loki back to Asgard. Where they came from. Where they will stay. Thor has promised to make Loki stay there. In Asgard. Somewhere on the other side of outer space. 

Clint takes deep breaths. He looks at the sunlight on the wall. He runs his hand across the sheet. These are probably very expensive sheets. They don’t feel like anything special to him.

Very slowly, Clint swings his legs off the bed and sits up. He presses the heel of his hand against his forehead, and clutches at the edge of the matress. Would he feel better if he just puked now?

Clint staggers to the bathroom and vomits.

Kneeling on the tile floor, covered in cold sweat, Clint feels tears on his face. Clint takes deep breaths.

Eventually he stands up and washes his face. There’s a small bottle of mouthwash on the sink, so he does that. He notices that he’s still wearing the clothes from the night before, minus the hoodie. Clint leans over the sink for a minute, hands braced on the counter, not looking at his reflection. Then he washes his face again, and goes to find Natasha.

She’s in the kitchen, and when he comes in she takes the pot from the coffeemaker, even though it’s still dripping, and pours him a cup. The spilled coffee hisses on the heating element. He steps very close to her to feel her warmth as he takes the mug from her, then unsteadily takes a seat at the island. He stares into his coffee cup. Natasha isn’t saying anything.

“So,” he says eventually. “Fury’s going to let us live.”

Natasha gets another mug out of the cupboard, pours herself some coffee. She sits down next to him, and says, “Actually, babe, he’s doing more than that.”

Clint hates it and Clint loves it when she calls him babe. She does it when she’s trying to cheer him up.

“SHIELD sent cars,” she says. Clint takes a long drink from his coffee and tries not to look nervous. “A motorcycle that I guess belongs to Rogers, a van to transport Loki and the hardware, and a car. A field unit. For us.”

“And they’re just giving it to us?” Clint says. There must be a mission. “Are they really sending us out again already?”

“I don’t know what Fury has in mind,” Natasha says slyly. “But I was thinking Vegas.”

Natasha is watching him, waiting for his reaction. Clint eventually realizes what she’s suggesting. She means—what normal people would call a vacation, he supposes, although it’s difficult to think of that way. Convalescence. Unpaid leave for recovery from mind control. If SHIELD sent them a car with no mission, it wasn’t a gift. They’re telling him to go outside and play while the grownups talk.

Clint and Natasha have spent a lot of time together in cars. Natasha has spent a lot of time recovering from brainwashing, dealing with her past, reconciling her morals with her body count. She’s almost the only other person he knows who will be grieving Coulson as something like a friend. She is the only person he can possibly imagine being around right now. 

Plus, Vegas. Vegas sounds nice. He smiles at her, thinking about how comforting it would be to annihilate a high stakes poker table.

Natasha gives him a satisfied nod, and they drink their coffee quietly until the others start filtering in. Clint tunes out when they start talking about the logistics of Loki’s return trip. It’s not that he doesn’t want to know, exactly. He just really doesn’t want to know.

Stark shows up, presents Natasha with some normal clothes and a truly Tony Stark speech, which is the first time Clint really notices she’s wearing her uniform from the day before. It must be disgusting. She disappears to change. Rogers is cooking, and Clint hovers by the stove for a minute until Rogers hands him a plate. Natasha comes back wearing street clothes while he’s eating, staring out the window. Steve and Thor join them at the table with their own generous plates of food, eating in tense silence. Stark reappears and says what everyone (or, maybe just Clint) is thinking, with his usual tact. “Come on, gang, don’t we have some aliens to return to the store? The creepy government van is waiting to be filled with intergalactic war criminal.”

Rogers rolls his eyes, Thor frowns. Natasha is the first to stand and carry her plate to the sink, so the others follow her lead. Natasha distributes sets of keys from the pile on the counter. Even Stark is quiet in the elevator down to the garage, where he immediately jumps into a really sexy red convertible and is the first one out the doors. Natasha nudges Clint toward the SHIELD car, identifiable by the really kind of excessive SHIELD IDs stenciled all over. Clint is getting in the passenger side when Banner walks up, hands in his pockets, smiling sort of sadly at Natasha. She smiles back at him and opens the back door on her side.

Clint finds an actual, physical atlas in the pocket on the back of his seat and starts paging through it as Natasha drives. It’s about 2500 miles to Vegas from here. They can miss Iowa entirely if they go through St. Louis, Amarillo. Deserts instead of mountains. If they took 70 they’d pass something called Desolation Canyon. The Badlands are a couple hundred miles north of 80. There’s a town called Rifle west of Denver. He can feel Natasha watching him even while she’s driving. There is a pair of ugly sunglasses in one of the cupholders, and Clint steals them and puts them on. They park on the side of a little road in the park, and Clint says, “I want first shift driving,” to distract himself from what’s about to happen. Natasha says, “okay,” and then what’s about to happen is happening.

Selving and Banner are handling the tesseract, and Clint doesn’t look directly at it. He can feel it. It has its own gravitational pull. It’s like the cliff hugged by a narrow highway, like a gun in a drawer, like the bottom of a bottle. Loki appears. They have a kind of gag on him, like a muzzle. Clint watches him carefully behind his sunglasses. Loki watches him back. Clint holds himself still, makes his face blank, tries to look at Loki as a mark, to be a sniper about it. Distant, removed, observing, prepared to end a life on command. It’s not reassuring. He’s clenching his jaw so hard his teeth hurt when Natasha leans toward him and whispers, “I took a photo to tape to your practice targets.” It’s stupid, it’s so stupid, and it makes him smile.

When Thor and Loki are engulfed in blue light, Clint has to force himself not to flinch. When the tesseract’s light flares out towards them, reaching, he considers his single cautious step back a victory. Then he turns and walks stiffly to the car, standing by the driver’s side watching Natasha and Banner. She’s silent when she finally gets in, so he starts scanning the radio as he peels out. He can still hear the _whoosh_ of the portal or whatever the fuck like wind in his ears.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Eventually his life gets kind of blurry, and he still feels like throwing up while crying and shooting things, but it’s sort of a hypothetical urge, one that he can put off until tomorrow, maybe._

The car is designed for running down targets in urban areas—it handles like a wet dream and it has lights. Clint is itching to turn them on and skip the traffic, waving SHIELD paperwork at anyone who looks at them twice, but Natasha seems to know this and she gives him a stern look when she catches him eyeing the extra buttons on the dashboard. It feels like they’re on Henry Hudson for _days_ before they even get to the bridge, and as gross as New Jersey is, Clint starts to breathe a little easier once they’re really out of the city. Manhattan was making him claustrophobic in a way cities hadn’t bothered him since he was a kid. There were lots of detours, ROAD WORK AHEAD signs up where he knew there’d just be twisted alien wreckage lying in the street. He doesn’t want to see any of it.

He’s a little crazed with grief about killing agents. He’s a little crazed with the idea of free will, the lack thereof, the concept of mind control. It’s already haunting him that Loki has been brought to another galaxy, where who knows what he’ll be held accountable for. The Asgardians were canonized as gods; gods are not known for their respect for human life. 

Clint wants to fight, he wants to drink, and he wants to fuck. Those are his only aspirations for the next week, at least. Then, after that, he still doesn’t know if he’ll be able to return to duty. He doesn’t know if they’ll let him—although mind control is a level of compromise that SHIELD has dealt with before—and he doesn’t know if he could stand it. If administration clears him, that doesn’t mean the agents on the ground will believe that he’s clean. You never know whose buddy you’re working with. You never know whose buddy died on the helicarrier after Clint shot arrows with bombs on them into the engine. 

They do eventually reach I-80, and then Clint lets loose and doesn’t stop for four hours. By then they’re in the middle of fucking nowhere Pennsylvania, and they need gas and caffeine and to take a leak. When they head back to the car in the gas station parking lot Natasha pauses, holds out her hand for the keys. He doesn’t respond, just gets back in the driver’s seat, so she doesn’t touch her coffee and goes right to sleep on the passenger side.

For about ten minutes, Clint tries to be polite about it and leave the radio real low, but the quiet is leaving him alone with his thoughts, and being left alone with his thoughts is kind of making him want to claw his face off. And he needs his hands and his eyes for driving, so he finds a satellite station (why do the SHIELD cars have satellite radio, this has always seemed really unnecessary to him but it’s also kind of great) that sounds like something Stark would listen to and turns it up, just loud enough to be distracting.

Natasha opens an eye and manages to convey vague annoyance before closing it again and curling a little tighter in the corner. Clint drums his fingers on the steering wheel, thinks about buying cigarettes just for something to do with his hands, decides against it, thinks about buying a fifth of something cheap and terrible, shelves that thought for later. In the meantime he appreciates the lush forest on either side of the highway, and screaming electric guitar, and tries to meditate on nothing.

The next time they stop for gas, Clint buys that bottle, because you never know what kind of draconian liquor laws you’ll have to deal with where you end up at the end of a day, and he is fucking definitely not going to risk going to bed sober tonight. He’d sort of rather keep driving, really. He’d sort of rather just watch the white lines tick by until he’s not thinking about anything. Natasha watches him as he parks at the shady liquor store, but she doesn’t say anything. She’s hardly said anything all day, and he knows she’s mourning Coulson, too, and he isn’t sure if they’re ever going to talk about it. He doesn’t know what he’d say. He doesn’t know how to define any of the relationships in his life, he’s not sure how to mourn someone who was your boss and your father and your best friend, and he sure as hell doesn’t fucking know how to mourn an unknown quantity of coworkers whose deaths you’re directly responsible for if not big-picture responsible for, and really what’s the difference. He knows, he does know, that Natasha is the only other person he’s ever met who can actually empathize with this fucked up scenario, but that really doesn’t make him want to talk to her about it. He grabs a bottle of bottom-shelf vodka in addition to his rotgut, hoping to god that she’ll take the hint and they can drink themselves blind and he’ll stop seeing flickering blue shadows out of the corners of his eyes. She makes a face at him when he gets back in the car with the two bottles, but she’s still not trying to make him talk about his feelings, so.

It’s well after dark when Clint finally stops for the night, somewhere outside of South Bend. Clint goes and books the room while Natasha waits in the car, because there’s nothing like bringing a beautiful woman into a shitty motel at midnight to raise eyebrows in a small town in the midwest. 

Inside the room, Clint drops his duffel on the floor and immediately opens his bottle. Natasha sits on the end of a bed and considers him. She takes a breath like she’s going to say something, so Clint seizes the vodka and holds it out to her. “Not tonight,” he says. “I don’t know what you’re going to say, alright, but whatever it is I’m not ready for it tonight. I’ve got no problems with drinking alone, okay, so you can keep me company if you want but, this is just what I’m doing.”

She sighs. “It’s not going to feel like this forever,” she says.

“Well, it fucking feels like this now.”

She swigs from her bottle and makes that same face again. “This is exactly as disgusting as I thought it would be.”

Clint gives her a sick grin. “You can buy the next round, then.”

She bares her teeth, then takes another drink. “I am definitely buying the next round.”

Clint’s own beverage isn’t much better than Natasha’s looks, but he brought this on himself and he will take it like a man. They drink in silence for a bit, and eventually the terrible fucking alcohol starts going down easier. Eventually his life gets kind of blurry, and he still feels like throwing up while crying and shooting things, but it’s sort of a hypothetical urge, one that he can put off until tomorrow, maybe.

Natasha speaks up from her sprawl on the next bed. “As far as coping mechanisms go, I can see the appeal of this one.”

“So there,” he says. “This is how American men have been dealing with problems for generations.”

“That explains some things about America, I guess.”

Clint throws a pillow at her. She punches it out of the air. Clint sighs, and turns on the TV. Local news, local weather, national news (showing a photo of Rogers looking fucking majestic even covered in grime in the ruined streets of Manhattan, and Clint changes the channel instantly), a reality show about… houses, or something, _Die Hard_. Clint leaves it on _Die Hard_.

Natasha makes a grunt of approval as it cuts to a commercial break. “He’s not doing so bad, I guess.” She says. “But what exactly is the objective of these antagonists?”

Clint explains the premise to her, stupidly grateful, during the commercials, and then they watch in silence when it comes back on. During the next break they discuss alternate strategies for single-handedly retaking an office building controlled by terrorists, and by the time the movie ends Clint is so drunk he’s saying, “No leave it on, we should watch _Ocean’s Eleven,_ you’ll love it,” and he’s pretty much not even thinking about dead agents or brainwashing aliens. He falls asleep before Brad Pitt and George Clooney even finish recruiting their team of misfits.

Clint wakes up moaning, to Natasha holding out a styrofoam cup of what is guaranteed to be terrible coffee. “You did this to yourself,” she reminds him. “ _Ocean’s Eleven_ was okay, though.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have this horrible feeling this fic is just going to keep going forever.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Thor told me he rescued you from the Hulk like a damsel.” Clint flinches in anticipation of Natasha’s slap, but instead she just says, “You boys and your gossip,” and turns toward the window.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I DIDN'T MEAN TO ABANDON YOU I'M SORRY
> 
> have some misery

The next few days are basically the same. Clint drinking himself to sleep in cheap motels with Natasha’s begrudging company, waking up to terrible coffee and another day on the road. Natasha’s navigating, and they’re heading west, but they don’t seem to have a destination. She just wants to keep him moving.

Clint can feel Natasha watching him speculatively after he hustles her into the car at dawn. He’d been lying in bed staring at the ceiling with panic-wide eyes since the very small hours of the morning, and 5 AM had seemed like an almost reasonable human time to pretend to have just woken up. Natasha doesn’t buy his act, and he’s watching the sunrise in the rearview to avoid making eye contact with her. When he hears her sigh in the way that means she’s about to broach an uncomfortable topic, he decides to beat her to it.

“Thor told me he rescued you from the Hulk like a damsel.” Clint flinches in anticipation of Natasha’s slap, but instead she just says, “You boys and your gossip,” and turns toward the window.

Clint opens his mouth, closes his mouth. “I—is it _true_?”

She glances back at him long enough to raise an eyebrow. “He stepped in when I was outmatched,” she says, tonelessly. “I’m not on even ground with the Hulk. Thor almost is, it turns out.”

Clint thinks about this for a minute. “So is Banner a liability?”

Natasha looks at him sharply. “Jesus, Clint. _No._ ”

“But if not even Thor can keep him in line—“

“Clint. _Bruce_ is a physicist. _The Hulk_ was a valuable asset in the Battle of New York.”

“He tried to eat you!”

“He intervened when I was facing Loki alone, and probably saved my life, Clint. The incident on the helicarrier wasn’t Bruce’s fault.”

“Just because it was an accident doesn’t mean it won’t happen again.”

“You know, I really don’t think it will.”

Clint side-eyes her so hard the car starts to drift across the median.

“Clint,” she says, gently, and his hands tighten convulsively on the steering wheel. If Natasha is being gentle with him, then what follows is going to be so, so bad. “Loki got to us somehow on the helicarrier.”

“Dammit, ‘Tasha, _I know_ , Coulson—“

“No, Clint.” Her fucking eyes are huge and unblinking. “When he was still in a cell, he got to us. He was… influencing us somehow.”

Clint takes deep breaths.

Clint takes deep breaths.

“What do you mean.” He says.

Natasha is watching him so intently. “When I interrogated him, he brought up Banner, called him a monster. He knew about the Hulk and he intended to _use_ the Hulk—he wanted to end up on the helicarrier with us so he could get to Banner. When I went and found Banner to try to get him somewhere secure, all of us ended up in Banner’s lab, arguing. Stark and Rogers picked a fight with Fury about Phase II, and Banner got defensive about his autonomy. None of which was unexpected, really, but you should have seen it escalate. Stark and Rogers nearly came to blows, and I was getting in Fury’s face—I don’t even remember what I was supposed to be mad about. Everyone was out of control. We were obviously under the influence of something.”

Clint is trying not to let his panic show in his eyes, but Natasha’s surely already noticed. "So you think Loki made Banner turn?"

"Actually no. When we were all arguing and it seemed like Banner might lose it, he didn't change. He picked up Loki's scepter."

Clint takes deep breaths. "What did he--?"

"He didn't. He didn't seem to realize he was holding it. But what I'm saying is he went for a weapon. The Hulk didn't come out until we'd fallen two levels. It took more than just an emotional outburst to make him change against his will, is the point.”

Clint closes his eyes for a second, but he's driving, so he can't just shut everything out the way he'd like to. He doesn’t want to watch Natasha talk about this.

"So--what? What do you think? He's not a threat?"

"No. I really don't think he is."

"But what if--"

"Clint. Why did you make a different call when you met me?"

“ _What?_ Natasha, that is _not—_ “

"Isn't it?"

Natasha is very calm, sitting quietly next to him, comparing herself to a mindless beast that once destroyed half of Harlem. 

"You're not--" Clint starts.

"Banner's not, either," she interrupts him. "He carries something horrible, just like I do.” She pauses, and Clint feels it like a roundhouse kick to the chest even before she says, “Just like you do, now. That doesn't make any of us a liability."

Clint takes deep breaths, but they start coming ragged out of his throat. Natasha puts a hand on his arm, and he pulls over to mash his face into the steering wheel and scream.


End file.
